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MSNBC silently cancels 'The Site'

I always suspected that I was the only one who watched the show and this week my fears were verified when MSNBC cancelled "The Site," its computer television program. Princess Diana's untimely death caused MSNBC to preempt the show for two full weeks so it could offer around-the-clock coverage of the accident. Perhaps it was telling, but The Site was the only show on MSNBC that couldn't easily be retooled for "all-Diana" scheduling that the company wanted. Apparently, the Diana incident caused a nice spike in the ratings for MSNBC and it still hasn't gone back down. MSNBC saw the writing on the wall and switched to an all-news format, leaving The Site out of the picture.

Unlike garbage such as "C-Net Central" its half dozen spin-offs, The Site was good television. I'll miss Soledad O'Brien (who I met last year at Fall Comdex) and "Dev Null," a nicely animated bit of real-time computer technology. Fans of The Site may be interested to know that most of the show's existing employees (except for O'Brien, who is employed by NBC) will be moving over to a new Ziff-Davis computer show called "ZDTV: Your Computer Channel." Hopefully, this show will not be as pathetic as the C-Net clones.

In an odd bit of electronic journalism, the online version of The Site is covering its own demise

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